Prepare your Car’s Trunk
I am writing this from the United States. And in the US, a whole lot of life revolves around cars. You likely drive a car to work, to drop your kids off at school, to the grocery, and on vacation. Would it be better if we all had short supply chains and walked everywhere and bought eggs and pork from our neighboring farms? Sure. But if you are like me, that doesn’t work out in the real world. So we drive a lot. And I mean a lot.
Since you already guessed this whole website is about being prepared, you know where this goes. Car preparedness. Some people call this “Car EDC” (EDC = Every Day Carry). Basically, stuff that stays in the trunk of your car all the time, and will get you out of a jam. Now, I am NOT including “bugout bags” or GHB’s (Get Home Bags) in this particular section. I highly recommend a GHB, and I keep one in all my cars for sure. But I am talking about stuff that needs to be in your car to help you get through normal disasters, short of “there’s a EMP attack and you have to walk 200 miles home” or something like that. Let’s just stick to the basics of motoring.
I’ll break this up in to rules and thoughts, but first, what do I mean by disaster? Here’s a couple examples:
You have had a long week, and are looking forward to going to that barbeque this weekend. You just tucked the kids in to bed, and your wife will be home from that business trip tomorrow. But you remember that you are supposed to bring the steaks to the party, and you talked up how good your 24 hour marinade is! You forgot to marinate the steaks. In fact… you forgot to BUY the steaks! You do the math, and realize that you will be totally fine if you sneak out to the store (there’s a 24 hour grocery 3 miles away), grab what you need, and get those steaks marinating. The kids will be fine for the 15 minutes to the store. You sneak out, lock the house, and drive to the grocery. There’s no one in the parking lot. This is great! You’ll be so fast. You hustle in, buy what you need, and come out to the car and…. click. Battery in the car is dead…. You can feel the panic rising, because you know that AAA is gonna take forever to get there. You left your kids alone! Ack!
You are pumped for your ski vacation. The kids are finally getting the hang of it, and you are headed up to the mountains for the weekend. Car’s packed, kids are whining less than normal, you only have a few hours drive, and you’ll be tucked in to some hot chocolate and ready for a great trip. You get on the road, and as you get up in the mountains, it starts to snow and sleet a little. No worries. You have AWD, and will just take it slow. But that big truck in front of you keeps kicking up slushy mud, and as the windshield streaks, you squeeze the washer lever to clean the windshield and…. Nope. No more washer fluid.
You are on a roadtrip to LA. You are making good time, the kids are asleep, and you are cruising. You are driving on that part of I5 that had no exits, and is just wide open, no trees, no nothing, just fields forever. Love it. All of a sudden, break lights up ahead. The cars slow ahead and stop. Dead. Looks like some sort of huge accident a couple miles in front of you. Other drivers shut off their cars and roll down their windows. Even the big rigs. Looks like it is gonna be a while. No worries, it isn’t too hot, and you have plenty of time. Both kids wake up, ask what’s going on, and then, after about 30 seconds, inform you that they have to pee SUPER BADLY. You look at your wife sheepishly, and she tells you that she also has to pee. You look around and the chain link fences along the road, and complete lack of even a shrub tell you this isn’t gonna be fun…
Are those “disasters?” For me, they are. For me, the thought of not having a solution road trip peeing, backup antifreeze windshield washer fluid, or a battery pack booster that stays in the trunk to get me back on the road always makes me worry.
Being prepared for the little, common stuff is as important in many cases as the “big stuff”. I don’t think you really can prepared to swap a transmission on the side of the road. But you sure as heck can factor in the need to jump start a dead battery.
Rule 1: The Half Tank Rule
This one costs nothing. Well, some would argue you need to go to gas stations more frequently, which costs you time? But for me, it is the cardinal rule of being prepared. Simply, I NEVER let my car have less than half a tank of gas. Ever. Why? Because basically every disaster in which a car is involved also involves… gasoline. And basically ANY disaster means people freak about gas first. If you had a TV news van, and you wanted to show that things were “getting out of hand” you’d show long lines at the pump! I usually try to go a little further, and try to make sure I have enough fuel to always get where I am going from where I am. I get a little nervous if I am 500 miles from home and don’t have the fuel to make it with a cushion.
And of course, if you have to run from a wildfire, or hunker down in a snow bank, the more gasoline you have, the better. Now, storing gasoline at home is a whole different ball of wax, which I’ll skip here. But basically, don’t let your car get low.
Side Note: I read a lot of “prepper fiction” (my thoughts on that HERE) and I read a series called “The Borrowed World” by Franklin Horton. The Borrowed World is a whole series (he has written a lot of books, most of which I have read), and falls somewhere in the “middle” of my favorites. It isn’t the best, and it is honestly pretty unrealistic in parts. The world falls apart WAY too quickly, and I find it hard to believe that EVERY person you meet on the walk home is a psychopath. However, the book focuses on this guy Jim. Jim lives in a rural place, and is a full on prepper. I’ll spare you the details, but he what I’d call a classic rural prepper and a “good” guy. He is on a business trip 200 miles (I forget the exact disatance, but it isn’t that far) from his home with some co-workers (conveniently one of them is also a prepared sort of fellow, and the others aren’t) and he stays at a hotel for a conference. Before he goes to bed, he thinks about filling up the car, but figures it is no big deal. Naturally, that night a big terror event happens (Electrical Grid down!) and Jim has to try to get home. He isn’t THAT far from home, but of course, bad things happen when they try to get gas, and he is forced to walk, starting a process of craziness that is the book. Every paragraph I read in that whole book I kept thinking “This book should have been 7 pages long… He could have just driven home!!!”
Much to my wife’s chagrin, I have “trained” my kids to look at the gas gauge in the car, and shout out whenever the car gets close to half tank. I always praise them when they do this, and of course, now they do it when I am not even in the car. Works like a charm.
Rule 2: Be able to jump start your car and someone else’s
Most car trouble comes down to a dead battery. Maybe the alternator, maybe the battery itself. Maybe you left the door ajar. Maybe the dome light. Who knows? But the absolute main thing with cars is to be able to jump start yours, and someone else’s.
Now, historically, the way to do this was good old fashioned jumper cables. I love them, I use them, and like nice ones. If you want jumper cables, good. But know this. The skinny shitty ones don’t work. The whole idea behind jumper cables is to allow a LOT of current to flow. And the little junky ones don’t do that. So if you are going to bother, get good ones. The way to tell good ones, are you want either 2 or 0 gauge. The lower the number, the fatter the cable. So 0 gauge is for heavy duty current, like welding, etc. They are heavy, and harder to store, but they actually work when you want them. Literally don’t bother with anything bigger (numerically) than 4 gauge.
Get THESE:
DO NOT Buy these:
10 gauge = garbage. 2 or 0 (sometimes called 2/0) is the ticket.
However, I don’t use my jumper cables that much any more. I have swapped to a “booster pack”. Now, these aren’t new. For a long time tow truck drivers have carried these, and I used to have one like that as well. They used to be big, heavy things with lead acid (think a heavy car battery with nasty chemicals in them) with a handle and cables. You had to buy them from fancy places like Snap-On. They worked super well, but they sucked to have in the car, because they were heavy and full of chemicals I don’t want inside my passenger compartment.
However, over the past few years, a company called NOCO has made these absolutely incredible battery boosters, and I have fallen fully in love with them. I keep one in the trunk of every car, and I get the little case for them as well.
There are a zillion versions, from little weak ones, to crazy ones that could jump start the USS Missouri. But my absolute favorite is this Booster from NOCO.
I also bought its predecessor (the GBX150) which worked just as well. The main thing for me is that this is the right size, has the juice to boost a DEAD (not just low) battery, can do it multiple times, and has the ability to serve as a battery backup for other stuff as well (charge your cell phone, etc).
Because it isn’t exactly cheap, I also like to protect it with the case you can see in the picture above. It has a fuzzy interior, and fits it perfectly.
That fits it perfectly, and keeps it safe in the trunk. Note there’s also the “fast charger” plug shown in that photo too (the smaller pouch) as well as the two iphone charging cables from Anker (I like that brand) over on the right. I leave those two cables in the little “box” with the NOCO Booster in case of disaster. As you can see, the NOCO can be used as an emergency battery backup for electronics as well!
So the things in that picture are as follows:
Battery Booster from NOCO Shopping List
| ITEM | Link to Check Price |
|---|---|
| NOCO GBX155 Booster (this is the extreme one) | |
| Carrying Case for NOCO Booster | |
| Fast Charger and Plug for NOCO Booster - Charges at 65W!! | |
| Anker iPhone Lighting Charging Cables |
PROTIP: For some reason, NOCO products tend to have AWESOME sales on Black Friday. I have bought a few of these for myself, but they tend to be cheap at Black Friday. Does that mean you should wait to buy one? No. But remember to look for them because they make awesome gifts for family. I have given these as gifts to parents, and they are well liked.
As you can see, I bought my last one on Black Friday!
Also, notice I have actually bought a bunch of these suckers. These are the GBX150’s not the newer 155’s
Now, the next part of this rule is to make sure you KNOW how to jump start the car. You should practice this, but the basic thing to remember is to connect the RED ONE FIRST.
Why? Some of this is less of a big deal with modern cars, but the reason you do red first is that lead acid batteries produce hydrogen, and when you connect your jumper cables to the battery terminals there may be a spark in the event of a potential difference between the batteries (one of them is probably dead, so this sparking is actually fairly likely).
I have never had a battery blow up on me, but I also learned this early (my Dad was good about teaching me, and my grandfather was a mechanic his whole life). Might as well be as safe as you can.
1. Connect the red cable to both positive (marked with + or Red) terminals, in whichever order you like. You can connect the dead one first and then your car, or vice versa. No spark, as there is no difference in potential because current isn’t gonna flow without a ground.
2. Connect one end of the black cable to the negative terminal of the good battery. The car may be running and this is the easiest/safest spot to reach. Still no sparks.
3. Now connect the other end of the black cable to some part of the engine block away from the battery of the dead car. This way any sparks produced when you connect the final cable will be away from the battery & any potential outgassing. The engine is connected to the negative terminal of the battery by a large cable, so you will still make a good connection.
Remove in the reverse order.
If you want to be “kind to your future self” then you can label the car like this (picture of labels I made for the car my wife often drives). I have a mild addiction to labelmakers. I’ll have to write a topic on that.
Rule 3. Make sure you know how to open your car without a key fob.
Many (most?) modern cars don’t really have keys any more. I still prefer old cars (I daily drive a 90’s Mercedes Wagon!) but we have a newer Volvo that has the keyless entry and the key job you keep in your pocket. Despite being a bit of an automotive curmudgeon I will readily admit that keyless entry and keyless ignition is superb. Until it isn’t. Car battery fully dead? Yeah. Good luck with that remote unlock.
So it is important to practice (or at least try it ONCE) opening your car doors and/or trunk without keyless entry.
<show picture of that key thing in the volvo key>
Rule 4.) Keep a first Aid kit in your car at all times.
I really like first aid kits from MyMedic, and I recommend this one (I have this one in the trunk of a couple of my cars). I wrote a whole different Topic on First Aid kits, but for the car part of this, just go buy the MyMedic one. Or honestly, just put SOMETHING in your car.
Below you can see the My Medic Kit I have. I like that it says “Stay Alive” (though honestly, that doesn’t help me at all in a first aid situation).
You can also see here in this first picture all the stuff that came with it (as purchased). Most of this is self explanatory, but the blue thing on the keychain is a glass breaker.
This next shot shows you some of the stuff I added to it, to fit our needs.
You can see I added (Starting from top and going clockwise) all the stuff on the outside of the kit. I put the stuff that came with it back in there, and showed the additions outside.
Tecnu wipes and skin cleanser to get poison oak off. We have a dog, and poison oak is an unfortunate constant.
Portawipes. These are little expandable towels that work great. There’s a bunch of them (white “disks” or pucks) in that tube.
Dude wipes. Good for cleaning children. Or dudes.
Tylenol
Chapstick
My very favorite nail trimmers ever. Made by Victorinox, they are super sharp, and fold down small. VERY nice. I have several of these and I love them.
Excedrin (I get headaches)
Bonine (or generic version). My favorite motion sickness medicine. WAY better than Dramamine.
Goody’s Headache powder. Like excedrin, but works better for me. They are a powder that you pour in your mouth and they have a little caffeine and Asprin and Acetaminophen. Works like a charm. And also works in a pinch on a roadtrip if I cannot find caffeine.
Crystal Light drink mix. With Caffeine (can you tell I care a lot about not getting headaches yet?)
A sewing kit I got from a hotel (free)
Rapid Seal. Clear gel in a tube that stops bleeding immediately. Too messy to give my kids, but it works for cuts fast.
Quick Clot. Like the Rapid Seal, but in bandage form. I have used this stuff for all sorts of stuff, including a recent ice skating accident involving fingers. Yeah. There were stitches involved, but this tuned the person up rapidly and stopped the bleeding (and the crying) immediately. I was glad to have had this stuff in the trunk for that one.
Obviously, you should customize yours however you wish. This is just to give you an idea!
Here’s another shot of a bigger First Aid Kit from My Medic in the trunk of our Volvo. Yes, a Volvo Wagon. How’s that for Suburbia?
Rule 5.) Have Flashlights.
I love flashlights. Like a lot. I will likely write a whole topic on flashlights, but for this, just got some, preferably headlamps and put them in your car. Cars prefer breaking when it Is dark. And flashlights are a good thing always. I will write a whole topic on Flashlights, but if you want my favorite headlamp, get this one. The Pelican shown here is fantastic for a few reasons.
It uses AAA batteries, which gives you lots of choices. Read my thoughts on batteries here, if you haven’t already.
It has a glow-in-the-dark body, which really works well. Helps you find it in the trunk, and helps you find it when you drop it in a snowbank.
It is comfortable, and the elastic band doesn’t suck.
It doesn’t bother with all those fancy features like “night vision” (low wattage red light so you can pretend you are in a SWAT team). Just the basics
It is easy to “aim” by tilting it
It has a bulb that helps preserve the real color of things. Pelican is good at that. The beam doesn’t wash anything out, so when you shine it on something, that thing looks the color it is supposed to.
Basically, my favorite everyday headlamp. I have fancier ones, but that one gets the most use, and gets kept in the trunk. It also COMES WITH ENERGIZER BATTERIES! So that’s a nice bonus. If you want to read my thoughts on batteries, take a look at my topic on Batteries.
Rule 6.) Gloves. Get them.
Anything you do with cars winds up being messy. Tires are messy. Gasoline smells horrible on your hands. And because it is usually raining and cold when your car breaks, get some gloves. I particularly like the nitrile gloves like this:
Note that those link to a size large. Get the size that fits you. But those are durable. You don’t need the whole box of 100 in your car. Put some in a Ziploc bag, and put the rest under your kitchen sink.
My favorite cold weather gloves are these!
These are super durable, allow use of your fingers, and have a nice soft liner. They are not winter gloves really, but I use these for putting on chains heading to Tahoe and they rock. Plus, neon yellow works great.
Rule 7.) If you are going where there’s snow, prepare correctly.
Snow and winter vehicular travel is a whole different ball of wax. I actually have a winter kit I built that lives in the trunk for winter. It has a shovel, boots, reflective gear, MRE’s, blankets, the works. But it is overkill for this. Maybe I’ll write that up some day.
Rule 8.) Have a way to pee. In the car. As a woman.
Road trips are pretty much always filled with requests for bathroom breaks. At least in my family. I am glad to stop pretty much anywhere, because honestly, I don’t personally care very much what bathroom I use. Truck stop bathrooms are fine for me. My wife? A little less, but she is pretty good about it. However, there have been many times (traffic jam, accident up ahead, snow storm, chain control hold at Donner Summit on I-80 for 4 hours…) that peeing needed to happen and there was no pulling over, and no place to pee. When I was a kid (being a boy, obviously) the solution was always the 20oz Mountain Dew Bottle. I have tried to add a little class to my game since then, so I carry these things in my trunk (actually, one is in the glovebox).
The pink funnel things are… well… exactly what they look like. The tips are made to fit in to any bottle, and they are silicone so they can be cleaned, and they have a nice bag to put them in. Yes, you can get them in other colors, but I leaned in to the pink.
The silver bag things are basically sealable bags with a flap (the instructions show it being possible to use as a woman, but they aren’t that great, so I use these more to pee IN, in conjunction with the pink funnel things. My son can pee in the silver baggie and it turns solid, so there’s no worry of having pee in the car. Having a bottle of pee rolling around on the floorboard is like a stick of dynamite!
Both of those work really well. I also have a couple of these, which are slightly fancier versions of the silver baggie ones (come with wet naps and the like). But the silver ones are cheap and do the job.
The last thing I’ll say about road trip bathrooms is that if you want to go deluxe, there are options. We have a “road trip truck” (a 1989 Suburban with a popup camper, all kitted out for offroad adventure) and so I have plenty of space in that to bring things to deal with being away from civilization for a long time. And I carry one of these portable toilets.
It is REALLY sturdy, and the bags work wonders. And these will easily deal with a full sized adult, as well as what a full size adult (I am talking about me here) can.. um… produce. They are a normal height to sit on, and they are very, very well made (many years using the old “toilet seat on the bucket” thing while camping, but I have upgraded). We use this in the woods, and have used it on the side of the road when our kids were littler and when pooping always seemed to come as a surprise and with an urgency that did not allow us to get to the next town on that back road. I will caution you that if you buy that, you are really gonna want to get the carrier/cover thing too. It makes it look and feel a lot better to have it tucked away inside a bag in the trunk.
I use this a lot when I go elk hunting in Oregon with my best friend. We often camp out on logging roads and the like, and there’s no good place for a bathroom. My best friend Alan made fun of me the first time I busted it out of the truck, but once he tried it, he was actually hooked. Leaning against a tree pretty much sucks.
BONUS RULES (DRAFT)
Bonus 1.) Have a way to Siphon.
If something really bad happened, like an earthquake, or some sort of long term scenario, it is very likely that gasoline would be the most precious resource for a while. I suppose maybe you have a Tesla, and can charge it with your sweet 40kW solar array, but I don’t have a Tesla. So for me, I need gasoline. And there are many scenarios that might cause you to need to siphon gasoline from one place (probably the tank of your car) to something else. Or take it out of one car and put it in to another.
NOTE: I am in no way condoning stealing gasoline. You should never do this. But you also have to keep your family safe, and if you need gasoline to get your family to safety, then I assume you will have to do what you have to do.
Here’s the bad news. Modern cars are REALLY REALLY hard to siphon from. You might not know this, but most cars made in the last 20 or 30 years have a bunch of things to prevent siphoning. The first of those things is what is sometimes referred to as an “anti-siphon screen.” It is exactly what it sounds like. A mesh (metal) screen of some sort that is usually high up in the gas filler neck. In some cars you can even see them if you move that little flap aside (the one that pushes out of the way as you stick in the gasoline filler nozzle from the pump). They are designed so you cannot do exactly what I am suggesting you might need to… stick a hose down the filler neck.
The second thing that gets in the way is what is called a “Rollover Valve.” Again, automotive manufacturers are pretty good at naming things. This is a valve that shuts if the car is ever upside down because of a rollover car accident. The idea is that the valve will shut, and gasoline will not spill all over the road. This is a very good safety thing, but means it is really hard to stick a hose down the neck of the filler even if you manage to smash out the screen. I stole this screen capture of a rollover valve (basically a green ball in this picture) from briansmobile1 on youtube. Click to see the video on why it is hard to siphon from modern vehicles. I don’t know Brian, but I liked his video, so I wanted to credit him, and send you to his video! You can see that there’s no way you are gonna get a large diameter hose down that tube, but you COULD sneak a small one around the side! More on that below!
OK, so how do you deal with these things? Each car is different, so it might be good to try to figure out what your car has before you need it, but the options include:
Smashing the anti-siphon screen with a screwdriver (or something long). Note that metal on metal smashing can make sparks, which is not great in a tube full of gasoline vapor. So make sure you use some other sort of device that won’t make a spark. Brass, maybe, or hard plastic.
Figure out a way to bypass the filler neck. Sometimes a car’s gasoline tank has a rubber filler neck, and you can cut a hole BELOW the rollover valve and siphon from there. This will definitely involve being under the car, and doing some surgery, so this solution is not for the faint of heart.
If you are feeling drastic, you can drill a hole. Obviously this is a very dangerous idea that is sort of scorched earth. No going back if you are drilling holes in gas tanks.
You can (if the car will turn on) sometimes disconnect a fuel line and have the car’s fuel pump pump the fuel for you. Again, fairly serious automotive knowledge involved there.
Jack up one side of the vehicle to get gas higher in the tank, to be able to siphon better (or park on a hill, etc).
Lastly, you can try to bypass the screen and the rollover with a very SMALL siphon. Enter THE GAS TAPPER!
It is this last method that (for me) works the best. I invested in one of these gas tapper gizmos! I actually have two of these, one manual and one 12v, but the basic idea behind these is that you use a larger diameter “guide" tube” to get down in the neck, and then slide a smaller (very small) tube inside that, and you can kind of “work it around” the rollover valve. This works really well EXCEPT it is pretty slow. Hence, the 12v version. You do not want to pump a bunch of gasoline through a small diameter tube.
So I recommend getting one of these and putting it in the trunk. I also recommend practicing with it! It is not as easy as it looks (and honestly, it doesn’t even look easy).
While we are on the topic of gasoline, it is poisonous, explosive, and generally bad news stuff. So do not store it in anything that isn’t intended for it. If you would like to store a little extra gasoline in your garage (I am in California, so there are lots of rules), my personal favorite type of container is EAGLE brand. I like their metal cans, and I love their built in funnels, and the way the handle makes it easy to pour. I have several of these (the small ones and the 5 gallon ones), and I use them to store gasoline for generators, or in case of emergencies. Obviously I have now strayed from “the trunk” but figured we were on the topic of gasoline.
That link sends you to the 5 gallon one. But you should probably buy the 2.5 gallon one if you just want a little spare because it is much lighter and easier to deal with.
You can see here I have a few of them.
